Hot Topics:

PSP mobile reporting app potentially very risky

Updated:
01/11/2013 10:37:20 PM EST

Quick now, which of these activites would you consider suspicious: 1) a plain wrapped package at the side of the road near your home; 2) a non-descript van parked for hours at a time for no apparent reason; 3) strangers loitering in public rights-of-way, 4) packs of teenagers roaming through your neighbors' back yards, 5) all of the above, 6) none of the above.

We're guessing any serious quiz along such lines would generate as many different answers as there would be respondents. Different people have different thresholds for what constitutes suspicious activty, different benchmarks for risk assessment.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. The "See Something, Send Something" apps are focused, according to state police, on preventing terror attacks. Certainly the potential would exist to prevent something terrible, however unlikely it might be that terrorism lurks in your neighborhood.

But empowering untrained citizens to snap pictures of what they consider to be suspicious and instantly send them off to state police could also create many resource-wasting false alarms.

Advertisement

It could also enable abuse, particularly between people harboring grudges, neighbors who don't get along, and those who think that anyone who looks or acts differently from themselves must by definition be suspicious.

That last part is particularly important, so much so that state police included the following disclaimer in its statement announcing the program: "Factors such as race, ethnicity, national origin, or religious affiliation alone are not suspicious activity. For that reason, the public should report only suspicious behavior and situations (e.g., an unattended backpack or briefcase in a public place) rather than beliefs, thoughts, ideas, expressions, associations, or speech unrelated to terrorism or other criminal activity."

Well, that's certainly sound, sensible advice.

But if you have to specifically mention it for a program that turns everyone with a smart phone into a police informant, you might be courting a great deal of otherwise avoidable legal expense.

When you get right down to it, such apps really only speed up a process that's existed for as long as we've had modern law enforcement. But people would almost certainly think harder before picking up a telephone to call police about something that strikes them as suspicious. There is something about smart phones that seems to encourage thoughtless behavior and knee-jerk reactions - just look at all the ill-advised photos and posts they produce on the Internet.

There are also the usual concerns regarding privacy, the notion that free Americans ought not have their behavior and choices subjected to pre-emptive influence by authorities.

As an industry in the midst of a digital revolution, we certainly understand technology's ability to improve services and hasten their delivery. We're just not sure this program's potential benefits outweigh its potential drawbacks.

- By Matthew Major, opinion editor, can be reached at mmajor@publicopinionnews.com, or follow him on Twitter @MattMajorPO.